On Sale At Last: Twine, Your Gateway To The Internet Of Things

The hit Kickstarter product hopes to popularize "the Internet of things" with thoughtful product design.

A year ago, two MIT Media Lab graduates raised half a million dollars on Kickstarter to create Twine, a cigarette-pack-sized chunk of Internet magic that promised to turn any object in your home into a web-connected, interactive "smart product." Want your basement pipes to send you a text message when they’re in danger of freezing up, or your garage door to ping you if you forget to close it? No problem: With Twine, building your own personal "Internet of things" is supposed to be easier than programming a VCR. And now that the product is available for purchase, it looks like creators John Kestner and David Carr have very nearly delivered on that ambitious promise.

How do you get a non-hacker to even understand a device like Twine? With product design that would make Steve Jobs proud. Kestner, who studied industrial design as an undergraduate, tells Co.Design that "we wanted to wrap the functionality in something that didn’t read as an electronic object." Twine is packed with sensors that detect temperature, moisture, and position, but it’s as light, small, and unassuming as a pack of gum. "It’s just a solid chunk of connectivity," Kestner says. "We settled on elastomer [for the outer case]--it feels great to the touch, and reads as durable, friendly, and decidedly non-electronic."

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via Fast Company http://www.fastcodesign.com/1671312/on-sale-at-last-twine-your-gateway-to-the-internet-of-things?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+fastcompany%2Fheadlines+%28Fast+Company%29